Yesterday’s strikers ranged from retail and fast food workers to adjuncts and caregivers—all those ousted from the 1 percent economy.

April 16, 2015

Ready to fight back?

Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions every Tuesday.

Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue.

Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!

Support Progressive Journalism

The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.

Fight Back!

Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week.

Travel With The Nation

Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits.

Sign up for our Wine Club today.

Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?

Trish Weaver remembers the first time she went on strike at her Walmart in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. She was struggling to build a career for herself in the automotive services department, but the poverty wages—starting at less than $8 an hour—had become unbearable.

The 22-year-old recalls feeling “nervous beyond belief” about that first Black Friday action in 2013, but she then realized management wouldn’t punish her for striking. Now with three strikes under her belt, Weaver headed to New York City this week to join thousands of low-wage workers who rallied under the banner of “Fight for 15.”

The slogan drew an estimated 60,000 protesters on Wednesday, with demonstrations in more than 230 cities and several countries. The movement has hit workplaces that span from the drive-thru to the university campus, penetrating sectors where labor unions have historically had little presence, and rejuvenating long established locals. The demand for a $15 an hour (a full-time annual income of about $31,000) and union representation began with a small mobilization of fast food workers in late 2012, and has since gone viral. Backed by financial and political support of the SEIU union, the drive for low-wage workers’ rights draws together populist anxiety over inequality and a wide spectrum of dynamic media-savvy grassroots movements, from #BlackLivesMatter to economic justice campaigns in Europe, Latin America and Asia.

The subtext of the Fight for 15 is a struggle for solidarity across industries, galvanizing unionized service-industry workers alongside adjunct professors who occupy the lowest rungs of the academic hierarchy. A rally on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on Wednesday displayed a solidarity that dissolved stereotypes about who earns low wages today. (According to a new analysis from the National Employment Law Project, “42 percent of US workers make less than $15 per hour.”)

Alan Trevithick, an adjunct professor who holds part-time positions at several New York college campuses, spoke before a mass gathering of laborers, security guards and hotel workers, about his struggle to cobble together multiple teaching gigs with virtually no benefits or job security. “That’s a shame,” he said. “It hurts adjunct faculty, it hurts all faculty, it hurts higher education, and…it hurts students most of all because we can’t give them the time and the attention they deserve, and they’re paying for it too.” He and other adjuncts translate the Fight for 15 into a fight for $15,000 per course for adjunct instructors.

3

4

5

SEIU’s home health aides—who, like home care workers across the country, are largely women and people of color—are also rallying for $15 an hour for their 150,000-strong workforce (which is only about half-unionized). Despite having a union contract with some benefits, like healthcare, workers typically earn poverty wages even after decades of arduous, round-the-clock service to elders and people with disabilities.

Urcelyn, a home health aide who works in Manhattan, down the street from the rally, says $15 an hour would be a big improvement on the $10 an hour she currently earns. (Many community activists are now proposing $15 as a new citywide hourly minimum wage to keep pace with the city’s soaring cost of living—another knock-on impact of the movement.)

“I’m going to school. I have to pay my school fee. I have to pay my rent, I have to take care of my family,” she says, “and $10 cannot do that.” Union members like her were aligning with fast food workers and other precarious laborers, she adds, because “We all have to work, and we do not get any of the sort of recognition that we need, and so we are here today for everybody.”

School crossing guards, who have clashed with the city over inequitable pay scales, rallied alongside other workers to demand fair schedules and decent wages. As essential support staff, the crossing guards say their earnings are eroded by inconsistent schedules that don’t secure full-time hours and benefits throughout the school day and summers.

“If we had seven or eight hours, a full-time job, that would really help us,” says Michelle Dunston, but under the current schedule, “They take up your whole day, but they only give you part-time money.”

But Eugene Allen says $15-an-hour is shamefully low. “We are fighting for these fast food workers because they demand respect…. $15 an hour is a disgrace,” says the Staten Island Ferry security officer and shop steward with the city’s building services union 32BJ. “This is America. This is the land of the free…. The bus fares went up. How can you afford to even get to work, at $15 an hour?”

Yet those relatively tiny concessions have only seemed to sharpen the outrage surrounding the glaring inequality in the industry—particularly in light of the tremendous wealth disparities between rank-and-file workers and fast food CEOs and the Walton family moguls.

Weaver rejects the notion that workers dissatisfied with the conditions at Walmart ought to just seek a “better” job. She sticks to Walmart out of both necessity and principle: “Why should I not be comfortable in my [workplace]?” she says. “Why should I have to go to another job?”

As an organizer, she has a simple pitch to persuade coworkers to protest with her: “If you join, you’re going to make this company better…. Doing these actions, having a voice, speaking up for what is right—we’re not allowing these corporations to control [the] associates…. If it wasn’t for us, we would still be making minimum wage, we would not be making the $9. And we’re not going to stop there. I mean, come on, we got this far. We’re going to continue fighting till we get to $15 and full time.”

Walmart’s $9 wage offer was far too low, but just high enough to spur workers to ramp up their demands—there’s way more to gain than to lose.